Sabrina Little Ultramarathons

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Thursday, November 13, 2014

Backstory:
We have an international doping problem. Technology is advancing, and personal
integrity is declining (I imagine), so it is consistently a question on
starting lines whether the playing field is even. In 2013, I competed in the
24-Hour World Championships and placed second, so since then, I have been
subject to randomized blood tests to make sure I am clean. I'm glad this doping
initiative is happening, but yikes, it is a handful.

The
process goes like this: Every three months, I go online and complete a Whereabouts Quarterly Filing
to USADA—a list of all of the places I plan to go and at what times from then
until the next quarter. This quarter, I have to plot down the start and stop
times for every location from October 1st through December 31st.
I need to provide an address for each time slot, such as for my school, coffee
shops, and training facilities (which means, as an ultrarunner, a list of zip
codes I intend to run through). Each day, I also need to supply a 60-minute
time slot for probable testing. WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) comes during
that slot; USADA comes whenever it wants to.

If your schedule changes, and it does, you need to send a text to USADA to update your whereabouts. Otherwise, you might miss a test, which counts as failing it.

Often my texts are highly specific...Find me in this area code. It's simpler for sprinters and other athletes because they have training facilities. I train in big loops around town. Sometimes I hope that USADA will have to come looking for me in libraries or museums, to partake in the intellectual experience.

Another thing that I like to do is word the text messages like they are surprises, so it seems like I am always flying by the seat of my pants.

In my text messages, I go on surprise trips to the grocery store, to staff meetings, and to periodontist appointments. In reality, there is no such thing as a surprise periodontist appointment, and if the world were made up of surprises like that, it would be practically unlivable.

But alas...

Surprise Parties for One

Last night, I was sitting at my desk in
pajamas after dinner, emailing graduate programs, when I received two phone
calls in rapid succession from a Houston number. I should have guessed it was
my doping agent, but I was occupied and in my head, I assume the IAAF/USADA
has the same bifurcated understanding of my life that I do. When I’m training,
I am an athlete. When I’m working, I am a teacher/student. The spheres are
separate, and I try to do both with single-mindedness and integrity.

This is me with running: Shout out to everyone who says Cross Country is boring.

This is me with school, a dispositional 180.

Rule number one of fight club ultramarathoning: Don't talk about fight club ultramarathoning.

I heard knocking at my front door, and
was greeted by two agents. “Hi, Sabrina. Just a blood test.” Like I said, the
head agent called me from a Houston
number because he lives that far away, and because he has no other athletes to
monitor in the surrounding areas of Waco, his trips are always a surprise party
for one—me.

I felt stupid sitting there, having my
blood drawn in my pajamas, thinking, “I am a teacher. Why is this happening to me?”

Have you taken any glucocorticoid
steroids in the past month?

No.

Have you been out of the country in the
past two weeks?

No.

Have you received any blood transfusions
in the past month?

No.

Have you been exercising the use of an altitude
tent?

No.

When was the last time you trained?

I ran twice today—6 a.m. and about two
hours ago.

Be more precise. Was it more than two
hours ago, or less than two hours ago?

(That is one of the blood indicators—high
aerobic activity within two hours of the test.)

Less. No…I don’t know.

I couldn’t remember. I recounted my
activities since, and we guessed that it had been slightly more.

The consultation proceeded from there. Daily prescriptions, lots of signatures. The computer told us that Waco sits at an elevation of 432 meters. If my blood-oxygen reflects otherwise, I guess I would be in trouble. The agent takes out a set of 4 sealed vials and 4 sealed containment boxes for the blood samples. My task is to select the one I want to hold my blood, so that there is less of a chance of being swindled with a false positive.

The agent repeats the number of my selection to me again and again and tells me to watch his hands to make sure the same is used throughout. This part of the process seems like a magic act--like I will be watching his hands and suddenly he will pull a penny out from behind my ear. They take my blood. I sign some more things. We shake hands, and they leave.

My relationship with ultramarathon racing
is tenuous at the moment. USADA's visits seem like a relic from a past that no longer represents my conception of myself. I don’t
have time to feel implicated in national standards and statistics. In
moving across the country, I left my training group, which was fine for a
while, but it means my participation is abstracted. The relationships I had been
building in the ultra community are dissolving over the distance. I am weathered by USADA's monitoring, and I have other commitments. All of this is sad, because when the horn sounded at the World Champs and I broke the American Record, I knew (and I still know) that I could run further. I'm not done yet.

I love the discipline of running and the tangible sense of an investment that pays its dividends in racing, and I appreciate the adventure it affords me. I just don't know if I can be an ultrarunner over the long term.

But if nothing else, I am tremendously grateful that running made me a coach. My team has made my life richer and brighter. They are some of the greatest people I have ever met.

This weekend, I again have the honor of participating as an elite mentor at the Team RWB Trail Running Camp on the Nueces. It was a definite highlight of my last year, and I am eager to return. And next weekend, I will race the Big Cedar 100 in Dallas. I promise I will not take a single mile for granted. I will gobble them all up. Then, I don't really know what will happen. I'll let you know...after I text it to USADA.

Thursday, July 3, 2014

Race
Summary: The best part
about obscure racing distances? You always set a PR.

The
Backdrop

A week and a half before Capt’n
Karl’s, David and I boarded a plane and flew to upstate New York to visit
my dad. He lives in Seneca Falls—the birthplace of Memorial Day—the picturesque
town on Cayuga Lake where Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, and Susan B.
Anthony held the first Women’s Rights Convention back in 1848. Visits feel like
a sojourn to another century. Seneca Falls was the town upon which Bedford
Falls of “It’s a Wonderful Life” was based. It is quaint. I love to visit and
run the old streets.

On Sunday, we left for a nearby political
science conference, where David sat on a Tocqueville panel, and on Wednesday
morning, we were off again for the Society for Classical Learning Conference in
Austin, where I would deliver a talk on Saturday morning (8 hours before the
race start). In upstate, we biked a little, ran a bit, and hiked a lot, picking
our way past farms and through gorges. My dad’s love language is the “family
hike,” so we had daily adventures together. When we arrived back in Austin, the
Texas humidity struck me anew—its unique combination of horrifying and
wonderful.

At the risk of becoming a disembodied
head after back-to-back academic conferences, a race seemed like the perfect
ontological complement to a week of learning, and as I trotted along, it
definitely felt that way.

The
Race

The race started at 7 p.m. It consisted
of two sweeping 18.6-mile loops around Pedernales Falls, so I needed to take my
headlamp from the start and had to plan for only one exchange with my crew. I
have been reading a professional 800-meter runner’s blog recently, so I knew
how to race two laps well (just multiplying the racing distance by 74). Kick it off hard. Settle into a conservative
pace. Come through the first lap, and pick it up. Run the curves; stride the straights.
In the final stretch, kick it in with all you have left. Bingo. Easy as
pie.

After some initial meandering, I settled
into the familiar rhythm of chasing pink ribbons, one at a time, navigating the
course through the sinking dusk. After a sharp ascent, I was spectator to a
beautiful sunset over rugged Texas hill country. The sky darkened and grew
resplendent with stars. I was mostly alone, except for an armadillo encounter,
two tarantulas, and periodic back-and-forth with some of the men’s top 10.

I wasn’t in a particularly antagonistic
mood, so more often than not, I refused to engage the competitive advances of
the men’s race. There were no other girls in sight, so I just enjoyed the
unharried quiet of the evening—alone on the trail, with a headlamp and the
sounds of my own breathing.

The miles ticked by. Usually, when I am
running in the darkness (with the exception of Grindstone, which starts at 6
p.m.), I have already been out there for much of the day and sort of passively
take the experience in. On Saturday, I was very awake. I recited “Beware the
Jabberwock” while I crossed the river, and I picked out constellations. All in
all, this was the most calming race of my life. I trotted home in 1st
place, met by my magnanimous husband and awesome father-in-law. It was my fourth
race and fourth win of the season, all in the 50K-50-mile range. Thank you for
the support, TeamRWB, and thank you for
protecting my feet once again through wet conditions, DryMax Socks.

I think I need a big goal. I’d like to
try something different, like a fast marathon. That event scares me a little,
so all the more so. How fun would it be to do track repeats again full
throttle? So fun. I also want to see what I can do in the 100 and would love
the opportunity to increase the AR in the 24-hour while I’m strong and still
able to do that. We'll see. I just know I need a goal.

Also, if you are free mid-November for a
great weekend of trail running, you should check out Team Red, White &
Blue trail running camp. It is a super inspiring weekend of running,
training clinics, and fun, led by the likes of Liza Howard, with Jason Schlarb,
Max King, Katie DeSplinter, Dom Grossman, Matt Hart, Pam Smith, Meghan
Arbogast, Zach Bitter, the Bryants, and etcetera, as trail mentors. It is
awesome, and its aim is to help veterans reintegrate and reconnect with
civilian life through athletics.

Friday, April 11, 2014

All of my running partners know Latin—my
students and my husband. On Monday mornings at 6:30 a.m., we all gather on the
field outside the school for track practice repeats. They flank me on all sides,
like we’re a Roman legion—but faster(!)—and they call out the fractions for
remaining laps as we go.

When we finish, we do a cool down. We all
look the same—in our running clothes, muddy and messy.
I send them to get ready for study hall. The next time I see them, we have
resumed our daytime roles. I am in my teacher clothes, and they are dressed in
uniforms. We read great texts and bond over ideas. It’s basically what I would
have dreamed that life could be, if I had had the boldness to dream of a life
so awesome.

Big News for a Little

Last week, I was sitting at my school
desk, lamenting the fact that my pants had been accidentally tucked into my
socks for most of the morning, when I received an email from Howard Nippert,
the National Team manager. He said that he was looking back at splits, and when
I broke the 24-Hour Record, I also broke another—the 200K American Record (200K
in 19:30.30.). So now I have two! At this point, the mark is sort of deflated of meaning, since I can no longer mentally revisit the difficulty of running so hard that day, but I still think finding out this way was better than finding out on the spot. Probably the best way to find
out you broke a record is when you least expect it--when you have a lot of papers to grade and
your pants are tucked into your socks, or hypothetically, you have toothpaste on your
face again. Because then you can still feel like you’re doing okay, all things
considered.

In other news, as I explained in a
previous entry, I’ve been added to the USADA (the United States Anti-Doping
Agency) monitoring list, so they will find me periodically for surprise drug
tests to make sure I’m not taking steroids or blood doping. (I'm not.) They came for me at
school on Tuesday, interrupting a Medieval History lecture. It was a major
inconvenience but thankfully didn’t take too long. The agent told me he checked
my twitter to make sure I was in town, which would have felt disconcerting, like I was being watched by Big Brother…if he could have extracted any actual information about my life.

Races

Two weeks ago, I raced the Grasslands
50-Miler, in the LBJ National Grasslands, and earned my first overall win. So that was cool.

The Lyndon B. Johnson National
Grasslands is a huge park about 1.5 hours northwest of Dallas, comprised of
more than 20,250 acres of grassland. There is a lake. There are rolling hills,
trails, and horseback riders everywhere. Many of the trails are sandy and feel
like running on the beach, but others are a heavier clay/silt mixture. It was a
beautiful place to run. The temperature was in the mid 50s all day. It was awesome, and I was exactly where I wanted to be.

That being said, it was also miserable. I
got lost a lot—enough to cover about 57 miles, rather than the actual 50. I was
sullen, and looked like a meme of a disgruntled cat.

Eventually, I corrected my
attitude and began to appreciate the beauty of the day (and the ubiquity of
cows!), but by then I was ashamed that I’d not been very uplifting. I felt
emblazoned with a scarlet letter of indignity, like if Hester Prynn's sin had been having a bad attitude during an ultramarathon. (Just kidding, but that's a great book.)

Next year, I’d like to come back. I’ll study the map.

Next Up

On Saturday, I am racing the Toughest ‘N
Texas 50K. It’s on my home trails in Cameron Park, Waco. I’m not a huge fan of
50Ks, but I am a huge fan of Waco. I am excited to run.

Also, this month marks my 4-year
Sock-a-versary! Four years with the support of DryMax Socks and four years
without blisters. Thank you so much for your support, DryMax. I really, really love your socks.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

My first contact with USADA (U.S.
Anti-Doping Agency) happened the day before the World Championship in the
Netherlands. David and I were in the team hotel business lounge reading. I was
quaking with fear because I had just been locked into the hotel restroom (which
had three access doors to pass through until you were in the inner sanctum of
it—for the most heroic level of bathroom seclusion I have ever encountered; it
was like Narnia.)

In any case, the innermost door got
jammed. Ultrarunners aren’t known for their excessive corpulence, so I couldn’t
exactly thrust it open. My best bet would be to use my endurance to widdle the
door down with my body over time by repeatedly running at it, and that could
take years. So there I was, safe inside of the triple-door Narnia bathroom
where no one could hear my screams. I did scream.

I’m not exactly sure how it happened, but
somehow my underdeveloped noodle arms did get the door open. I thank God for
that.

I ran out of the restroom shaking and
alive, like I had just been given a second chance at life and this would be my
renaissance (my run-aissance). That was when the USADA woman started calling my
name and said I needed to come with her for a pre-competition drug test. I
asked her if I could bring my book and my husband. The four of us (USADA agent,
me, husband, and book) piled into a tiny car and headed to the drug-testing
area.

I honestly didn’t mind the drug-testing
because I found it to be of some sociological interest, except for the fact that
they took a bit of my blood, and I was counting on using it in the race the
next day.

Parade in matching outfits (basically my dream come true)

The following day was the Championship.
Nearing the end of the 24-hour, I pushed as hard as I could until the horn
sounded, completely oblivious to everything that was happening around me. I turned around and realized a woman had been following me on her
bicycle. As I sat down, she approached me and told me I would again have to go
for a performance-enhancement drug test. I always love a good test. (This is a
nerd problem.) I went. I was unenhanced.

Drug
Testing Pool (not fun like ‘Swimming Pool’)

I thought all of this was behind me after
that day, but every year, USADA selects a batch of athletes to include in the
International Testing Pool. These athletes have to record their whereabouts on
a weekly basis, including a 60-minute daily time frame when they will
periodically be tested for steroids and other performance-enhancers. It keeps
the sport honest. Ostensibly, the top-performing athletes are more likely to be
taking drugs because they are standing out in some significant way, so this is
a good thing. I personally don’t want to race against people who are
physiological cheaters.

Hypothetically, though: It doesn’t really
matter if you barely have the fortitude to open a bathroom door.

I just wish there were a second testing option:
I could either 1) take a blood test, or 2) show them how bad I am at pushups.

A Discourse on
Drugs

No.

I don’t even like alcohol. My second
grade teacher’s name was Mrs. Beer. I thought beer was a curse word, so I
called her Mrs. Bear all year long. These days, I'm no better. Every Sunday at church, I receive holy communion, and when I drink the wine, my face involuntarily scrunches up because I hate the taste. The pastor must think I'm the loveliest girl, always making faces at a holy sacrament. I even wrote a term paper at Yale on the negative ramifications of performance enhancers on human dignity concerns in sport. I have philosophical qualms. So really, this is a poetic injustice in my
life.

But here we go. I’m not sure what this
will be like. The best part about running is being free and challenging myself
to try difficult, unexpected things. And I like prepositional running (before things, between things, after
things; fitting in running when I can), so my locations are a bit
unpredictable. I don’t like the idea of having to report my whereabouts. Also, I am
pretty sure girls are supposed to be mysterious like Jane Eyre, and now I’m
always on the map. Alas, I can never be whimsical and elusive.

In other news, I'm training a lot. I rarely
talk about it on my blog because it is probably assumed. Since RR50, I’ve been
including more pace runs, core work, and plyometrics, and I feel stronger and
more consistent than I have in a while. It’s exciting. Track season has also started
up again! It is a joyful thing to be reunited with my runners. Here we go,
Falcons.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Concerns: 1) Alligators, 2) The two troops of Boy
Scouts looking for alligators, and 3) Not pacing myself correctly

Results: 1st Female, 3rd
Overall. 7:06

Significance: None on any real cosmic scale, but I
was happy to race something shorter than a day.

Post-race with Nicole Studer, winner of RR100 last week!

Race Summary:

Friday was exciting because one of my
students lost a tooth in his Cheese-Its, and I had to demand that he find it
and put it into his pocket. Also, everyone was still buzzing from the
excitement of the Science Fair the day before. After school let out, David and
I did a tune-up run, packed our bags, and headed to Huntsville. At our hotel, we
set our alarm clocks for 4:20 a.m. then watched some of the Olympics opening
ceremonies. I fell into a shallow sleep and dreamed that my student’s tooth was
liberated in the washing machine and bit through all of his sweaters.

Leaving our hotel room, the hallways were
full of other Rocky Raccooners scurrying at a frenetic pace. Ah, my people.

I picked up my race number, and saw Karen
Kantor (smiling, of course) on my way to the starting line. Liza Howard was
directing, so I sought her out at the start and she told me about the course
conditions. I stretched, had brief reunions with Team RWB trail camp
friends, and said goodbye to David. We were called to the line, and the gun
went off.

The
Course

The race is split into three 16.67-mile
loops. There is a mix of climbing and descents, though nothing crazy; this
is Texas. If you followed any of the coverage from last week’s RR100, you
know that much of the terrain is covered in roots—unproblematic when you’re
lucid, vexing when you’re fatigued. In the morning, racing by headlamp before
the sun comes up, this means you have to dorsiflex your feet a little, leaning
back on your heels so your toes don’t get caught under hidden roots.

There are also lots of open trails,
surrounded by loblolly pines (a.k.a. my favorite type of tree). These areas are
flat and fast. The trails were a little muddy when we began and grew
progressively more sodden loop after loop. It wasn’t
terrible, though.Anyway, it’s
hard to have a terrible time with Tejas Trails—whatever the condition—because
the people are incredible. The aid station volunteers…there are no words. Texas
knows its hospitality.

The
Race

This was my first race of the season and
my first 50-miler in years. I’ve had lockjaw on the 24-hour for a while. When
I started running ultras in college fresh off of running 3Ks on the track, I
began with the 100-mile distance. Shortly after, I discovered the 24-hour
event, which I really enjoyed because they are tidy and repetitious, so I stuck
with them. I ran MMTR50 in 2007 and have run a few 50Ks as tune-up events, but I've never given those events my sustained attention. Fifty milers are not within my
cultivated skill set. I want to change that. This year, I want to get fast. This race was a good early season gut check.

I aimed to keep my laps at a fairly even
pace. Most of lap one was in the
dark. I ran faster than I intended to (2:16) because running in the dark feels
like a treat. In the early miles, the masses had not yet separated out, so there was a lot of talking, like a mobile meet-and-greet. In the middle of the
lap, I fell off a bridge (a small bridge of Lilliputian dimensions that I could
have stepped over entirely). But the impact woke me up, and I felt great.

16.67 miles.

Lap
two was more of the
same. I wasn’t sure if I was running fast
enough or holding back, so I set my sights ahead and tried to pick off some of the boys. I used the open sections to accelerate, and I
made more friends.

33.34 miles

On lap
three, Boy Scouts were ubiquitous. I was
having a hard time believing that it was almost done. It's kind of awesome. You can run a 50-miler in the morning, and be grading papers and grocery shopping in the evening like nothing ever happened. David handed me my iPod.
I had it pre-set to an Al Mohler free market economics podcast, and I switched
it off. It’s funny how you decide things ahead of time, like, “This will be for
your own good, Sabrina. You need to know these things.” And then you’re 40
miles into a run, and you say NOT A CHANCE to yourself. I listened to pop teen
girl music, no apologies.

50 miles

And then it was over. All I can say is that I love Team RWB and Tejas Trails, and I love 50 milers. I look forward to doing more! And I'm eager to do track work, strength building, and pace runs--whatever it takes to improve in this distance. Thanks, DryMax socks, for keeping my feet safe in the mud! Thank you everyone who volunteered at the aid stations. Thanks Liza! Thanks Joe and Joyce! And thank you David, Kaky, and Louie for crewing for me. I had a fun day.

Saturday, January 4, 2014

Me doing a yoga pose. Just kidding. The day I attempt this is the day I lose my face.

One day, my friend, Katharine, and I
sprinted into Bikram New Haven. The people in the elevator held the door for us
begrudgingly, firing enmity at us with their rigid anti-yoga anger postures. We
all waited there in angst, clutching our towels and mats and definitely not
making eye contact because bikram studios are battlegrounds, and anyway, we
lived in the northeast.

There is a palpable social distress
syndrome called Bikram Anxiety (that I just made up), and
it is communicable and pernicious. You probably go to yoga class to alleviate
your stress because that’s what bikram says it can do for you if indeed you can
make your forehead touch your knees. (I can’t. Unrealistic.) But the net relaxation gain is less than you’d
expect because of the drama that precedes it. Still, I will go because
cross-training is indispensable if I want strength and longevity in my running.

Katharine and I exploded ourselves out
of the aggressive elevator, into the bikram outer room, which was
underground because bikram has its resonances with Dante’s Inferno. We were greeted by our classmate--bikram genius, Elise--who worked at Bikram New Haven’s front desk because she is such a beam of joy.

We pulled off our outer layers, tossed
our shoes against the wall, and rushed into the studio, where we strategically
threw down our mats, like they were flags and we were claiming plots of land
while expanding into the Western Frontier. The key is to set your mat down next
to someone who looks less bendy than you, but there is really no way of
knowing. Then we had to lie down for the remaining 11 seconds before class
started, so that the teacher could come in and tell us to stand up. It’s
protocol.

On one occasion, at the Falls Church Bikram
Studio, a ten-year-old girl was in the class, rolling around on the floor like
a diva every time the heat felt oppressive, and I wished I could have joined
her.I was glad her mat was next
to mine because I looked like such a pro. Sometimes you think you’re sitting
next to a non-athlete, and it will turn out she’s basically Gumbi, and your
flaws, by juxtaposition, will be all the more pronounced. But this was one
instance where I chose the correct floor plot.

Here are the 26 postures, or a pictorial
of 26 things I cannot do

A long time ago in my youth, in
2011, I attended my first bikram yoga class. If you don’t know what bikram is,
you are not missing out. It is a 90-minute pre-set series of 26 yoga postures
that is performed in a room set to 105°F and 40% humidity with 25 strangers.
Pretty casual. I like that it is suffocatingly warm because: 1) It makes you
feel like you are being hugged by the atmosphere. 2) Cold is the worst
feeling in the world. It’s worse than feeling misunderstood. It is worse than running
out of cereal. In my daily life, I anticipate the frozen food aisle with such
trepidation that it almost makes the frozen packages of steamed broccoli not
worth it. I wish all of life were held in a sauna. I wish microwaves were for
people. I wish turtlenecks were a fashion must-have. And living in the winter
in the northeast is the worst because you have to run outside in two
layers of pants. Your pants have to wear pants. Regardless, it was a real
process to motivate myself to get there in the first place, and then the class
itself was disastrous for a number of reasons: I’m not exceptionally bendy. I
don’t like to make errors in public. It was hard. My leg length to body size ratio
is erroneous, I’m pretty sure. (I reported on it here.)

What I didn’t know was that at the first
class, the yogi (yogurt?) was recording the class because he was going to sell
it. So for the rest of my yoga life, he teased me for being the object of his
chastisement one million times that day, for all of posterity, for anyone who
buys that recording. I stand humbled.

Still, I like bikram because it is awful
in all the right, edifying ways, and it challenges me to an extent that makes
me want to cry, which I have not experienced in straight running-training in a
long time. Did I mention it is warm? I still go, periodically, but now I attend
be-husbanded (with my husband). Bikram is difficult, and I know about it…so I’m
going to do it.

Running
is going well! I have been
training consistently and doing the things that I love--long runs and
weighted squats. I enjoyed a visit to my hometown, Vernon, New
Jersey, over break. It was beautiful and reanimated my affections for
the
outdoors.

In Texas, I am in Athlete Exile right now, without training
partners. It didn’t bother me last year because I entered Texas like a freight
train, continuing training patterns and strategies I had implemented
successfully in the past, but not having people with similar racing goals is
starting to wear on me and make me feel discouraged. When I’m with
non-ultrarunners I feel like I run too much, and then on the rare occasion that I happen upon an
ultrarunner, I feel like a slubberdegullion (a slovenly, slobbering person) for not running enough. I do, however, have an
awesome husband who will run with me for up to 20 miles, so I shouldn’t whine.

It’s
been fun reading everyone’s end of
year reports! Keep up the great things. Below are some snapshots of fun
things that happened this year. Blessings for a GREAT 2014.

Team RWB Trail Camp: So much fun and tremendously inspiring. You guys, let's support our troops.

Race
Summary: I probably
won’t finish this race report, to make it reflective of my race. I'm not super upset, though. I have this vision of being 90 and deciding to power walk across America in a cardigan, turtleneck, and wind pants, so I need to remain structurally sound until then.

Conceptual
foundation for my grief:
The Greek word for perseverance is hupomone,
which means to “remain under” a yoke, burden, or difficulty. It’s a concept I
like because somehow it makes the world feel more manageable if all you're doing is remaining as you are.
Ultramarathons are about managing a burden the best. Just go the fastest for
the longest. But part of maturing in a sport is growing in discernment
for when you are able to carry a burden and when you have to take your
inhaler and go sit down back off. I told David after 5 hours that I was too
sick to run, but I didn’t bring myself to stop for another 7 hours. I ran 77.9
miles in 11:45 hours and left. My dominating emotion is laziness, which I realize is contextual. My secondary emotion is hungry for cereal.

The
Run

When the sun fell on Saturday, I put my
headlamp on and was having a nice time—kind of like a spa day but faster.
Christmas lights were strung throughout the course, and I was enjoying the intermittent
company of running friends. It felt nice. We were only 10 hours in, but I became aware of a woman
hanging on my shoulder acrimoniously, which was an agitation to me. So I shut my headlamp off and
accelerated away to spare the both of us. In a 24-hour event, you're supposed to be congenial for the first 16 hours in casual excellence. It's ultra etiquette. Then you race hard. If you break each other down before then, you cost each other your races because it's too much of an emotional onus to bear for so long. Running is a special sport because you're supposed to out-race your competition, not break them down in any directed way.

When I moved forward, my legs felt light and comfortable, and I was so happy. Imagine
a tube of toothpaste. Every day, you empty out part of the tube and throw it
away and then start with a new one the following day. That’s what my life is
like, energy-wise. I like ultrarunning because it means I can probe my depths
on occasion. Even if I don’t get to live in fullness every day, I know that
sometimes I’ll get to go run and exhaust my whole self, which feels enlivening and corrective.

I’d been hitting 8:30s for much of the
first 10 hours. My chest was sore from wheezing most of
the day, and this concerned me. My super-mother-in-law and one of the National
team doctors had prescribed an inhaler for me, gotten it picked up, and given
me a dose. It helped a bit, but I was still not in fighting form. Being sick just feels bad. The problem with asthma is that it lowers your athletic ceiling, and
when you’re probing the boundaries of your finitude, trying to run for a day anyway,
you notice the difference.

I teach in a middle school full of angel
children who like to hug me goodbye when they get sent home sick, which I wouldn’t
change for anything in the world, but it’s made me quite the vector for disease.
On race morning, my chest was heavy. From the bat, I was coughing. Within an
hour, I was wheezing. My heart rate was elevated, and it made everything feel harder. My lungs felt like lava.

Ultimately, I decided I needed to go home to get better. When I say I am deflated, I mean it in the literal sense where a balloon loses its air, not in the unhappiness sense. At the end of the day, I really like to run. I'm glad I went. I met great people. There's a lot more to ultramarathoning than being Michelle Obama (the First Lady, ha). Sometimes I learn more when things don't go according to plan.

Contributors

Let my lifesong sing to You.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving. Colossians 3:23-24